Selling a spearing decoy collection help needed!

I had a friend recently pass away (5-7-14) and he has a very extensive spearing decoy collection that his wife would like to sell. Just looking for any suggestions on who might be able to give some insight on how to go about this for her. I would like to see her get as much as she can for the collection. She will be selling the entire (approx 3000) collection as one sell and will not break up the collection by selling individual decoys.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

THX

PM will be arriving shortly.

I understand the emotional desire to “keep the collection together”, but doing so would be a major mistake if the goal is to achieve the maximum return on the sale.

By selling such a large collection as a single lot, you are eliminating 99% of the possible buyers. Very few collectors will have the cash and the desire to buy a whole collection and if they do, it will only be to break up the collection by cherry picking the pieces they want and then reselling what they don’t as single pieces.

Like any other type of collecting, the danger is that a significant portion of the value of the collection could lie in just a few of the decoys. By selling them as one lot, you’re risking giving those pieces away at a fraction of their true value because the collector that REALLY would pay big money can’t/won’t buy the entire collection just for one piece.

My advice would be to take your time, get 2 or more professional evaluations, and get additional opinions about how to achieve the best sale price. Such a collection could well be worth listing at a specialty sporting auction to attract the specialized buyer.

Grouse

I know it is kind of an apples to oranges comparison but I recently bought out a friends center fire ammo reloading operation. But spearing decoys and reloading gear do not appeal to the vast majority of shoppers. I agree with the comments from Grouse, hard if not impossible to find someone who wants it all. I kept most of the supplies and some of the equipment but wound up with a bunch to sell. I believe E-bay will get the most money back for most goods. I advertised many items on shooting websites with no sale, then got more than I had asked when I went to E-bay. But E-bay is a lot of putsing around, photos, listing, packaging, answering e-mails, trips to the PO etc. I see there are more than 250 items on E-bay now when I searched “spearing decoys”. If there are collector associations that might be a good place to look.

I love ebay, and use it frequently to buy anything and everything

It’s a great place to find that hard to find thing

I’d see if someone could appraise the various pieces of the collection so you know what you have, then maybe try selling them at flea markets

Hey Scott, Exactly what Grouse said. I know it can be laborious but seperately will maximize dollars.
Take your time if your helping her and try not to let her “give it away” just to be done with it.

Thanks for all the help guys!

This will give us a good place to start!

Thanks again!